


Instruments and Measures

by The_Client



Series: Instruments and Measures [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Asexual Character, Demisexuality, Established Relationship, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt Kylo Ren, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Non-Linear Narrative, Serious Injuries, Soft Kylux, mostly pre-Force awakens with a little post-TFA twist (or is it)?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24971473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Client/pseuds/The_Client
Summary: Hux cares for Ren after Snoke’s harsh lessons, until he must face a moment of truth. Basically just injured-Kylo hurt/comfort in a non-linear narrative.*Hux is certain, therefore, that Rencannot not-feelHux's genuine desire to help and care for Ren. But it often seems that Ren can't quite believe it; that he discounts the perception as Hux would a physically impossible sensor-reading:the instrument must be faulty.Hux has concluded that the only way to proceed is to keep re-supplying the anomalous data-point, until Ren seems content to exist in a galaxy where grav-up reads as grav-down and the surfaces of suns as absolute zero, if only behind the door-panel of Hux's quarters.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Series: Instruments and Measures [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807441
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	Instruments and Measures

**Author's Note:**

> content warning: pain and injury (not graphically described); references to abuse (by snoke only)

The first time Armitage Hux encountered the Supreme Leader – or rather, his hologram – was in the service of an officer he'd mentally christened Commander Kowakian; for he found him more of a trained monkey, a performer of elaborate but intellectually empty status-rituals, than a true engineer. The project had been behind schedule, and the young man had stood by in detached boredom as the incompetent stammered out his excuses, including a “need” to take time off for a family emergency.

He’d snapped back to attention when his commanding officer abruptly rose meters above the holochamber floor, gasping and clutching at his throat. “You will not see nor speak to your _family_ again until your work is done,” the Supreme Leader had thundered. “If you defy me in this, or fail to discharge your duties sufficiently, I promise each of your loved ones will encounter a series of _emergencies_ such as your feeble mind cannot imagine.”

Hux had been unimpressed with the Supreme Leader's tactics – reading between the lines of old Imperial records, it was clear something similar had been tried with Galen Erso, and look how _that_ had turned out. Besides, Commander Kowakian was no Galen Erso. Lord Snoke ought just to replace him – say, with Hux himself.

The scene lodged in Hux's memory, nonetheless.

*

Hux wakes – from solitary, therefore fitful, sleep – to the distinctive chime he’s assigned to Ren's entry code. The subsequent sounds from the anteroom paint a picture of uncharacteristic – but unfortunately not unfamiliar – physical awkwardness. Hux climbs out of bed steeling himself against whatever he might see.

Ren has a horror of sedatives and narcotics, which tends to complicate trauma care. And as usual, the time window in which intensive bacta treatment could achieve near-instantaneous miracles has passed, even would Ren consent to be sedated and dropped in a tank. But he suffers Hux to inject him with a nerve-blocking local anesthetic. Then Hux stands behind his chair, forcibly holding Ren’s left cheek against his own chest, while the surgical droid aligns the bone fragments that had been Ren’s right hand and encases the result in a transparent, bacta-filled cast.

In the shower Hux does his best to check for additional injuries, but the adrenaline is no longer keeping the sleep deprivation at bay, and Ren will soon be deadweight. In the end it's all Hux can do to get him clean and into soft, loose clothes – the ones Hux had procured for him, that never pass the threshold of Hux's quarters. To make sure that when he predictably drops to the bed in a half-fetal curl, it's on his left side, with a stack of pillows at his chest to elevate the injury above his heart. To wrap the clear cast in opaque self-adhesive bandage, so neither of them need wake to the sight of the swelling and discoloration beneath.

He's asleep himself almost as soon as he curls around Ren's back.

*

He’s next awakened – paradoxically much better rested than before – by vague, uncomfortable stirring in his arms: the nerve-block must be wearing off. He curses softly and fumbles on the bedside table for the hypospray.

“Good morning,” he says.

“'Morning.”

“Do you remember … ?”

“Yes. Enough, anyway.”

“Painkiller shot? It's the usual.” The drug that won't mess with Ren's head, he means. Which is, unfortunately, significantly less effective at pain relief than the ones that would.

At Ren's assent, Hux injects him in the shoulder; then rubs the arm above the cast until the knotted muscle relaxes beneath his fingers. Says, because he isn't sure Ren was mentally present enough the previous evening to hear the droid's verdict, “You're going to recover completely. A few standard weeks in the cast, then exercises to get the strength and flexibility back. Don't worry, I'll look after you.”

“Don’t need looking after,” Ren mumbles.

“I know, darling.” It's not a dismissal. Hux has surmised – from stray comments of Ren's, and his own memories of Ren's intermittent, unaccounted-for disappearances from the _Finalizer –_ much more than he cares to know about what Ren must have managed on his own, before Hux became involved. “But you know I like to.”

*

He believes, in fact, that Ren both _does_ and _does not_ know that.

Before they'd ever touched, but after they'd made a habit of talking late into the night across Hux's desk, a slightly drunk Hux had drawled, _so what's it like to be a mind-reader?_ And Ren had surprised him by actually trying to to explain: how he couldn't _not_ perceive the most salient thoughts and emotions of nearby beings, any more than one could not-hear or not-smell or not-taste –

“Kriffing hell, you're right! Galactic evolution designed humans with the ability to effectively shut off only one of our primary senses! Why do you suppose that is? Seems like not-smelling could come in handy.”

Surely Ren hadn't touched his brandy; his abstinence was so consistent that by now Hux only poured for him out of courtesy, and for an excuse to toss down the extra shot himself after Ren took his leave. But perhaps Ren had somehow gotten a bit drunk nonetheless, because he'd smiled, almost _laughed_ , at Hux's tangent.

“So can you tell what I had for dinner the last thirty nights?” Hux had continued. “Where I hid all the bodies, on my way to the top?”

Again, the smile. “Not without trying a lot harder than I want to. Picking through memories is … effortful. And unpleasant, especially if the subject isn't willing.

“You don't want it, General. To never be alone, never experience quiet … I can dampen it somewhat – shield myself – but it's like keeping your hands over year ears, or pinching your nose shut, indefinitely. It's exhausting.”

Hux must have been drunker than he thought, himself, for unaccustomed concern pierced him like a surgical needle.

“Are you exhausted now?”

“No.”

“Why not? I must think loudly.” He'd been ready to be insulted, should Ren deny the prodigious clamor of his intellect.

“You do. But you think about engineering diagrams and strategic institute whitepapers and … why we don't have ear-lids? It's … restful.” The sleek dark head had tilted, huge eyes regarding him cryptically. “You may be lacking standard human emotional reactions.”

Hux had guffawed, unoffended; he thought such things often enough himself. But … _restful?_ He suffered chronic insomnia, from the constant cycling of those diagrams and reports in his head.

(He'd never have difficulty sleeping in Ren's company. Ren would swear he never used any mind-tricks to effect this.)

Hux is certain, therefore, that Ren _cannot not-feel_ Hux's genuine desire to help and care for Ren. But it often seems that Ren can't quite believe it; that he discounts the perception as Hux would a physically impossible sensor-reading: _the instrument must be faulty._ Hux has concluded that the only way to proceed is to keep re-supplying the anomalous data-point, until Ren seems content to exist in a galaxy where grav-up reads as grav-down and the surfaces of suns as absolute zero, if only behind the door-panel of Hux's quarters.

*

Ren climbs shakily out of bed over Hux's mild protests, insisting he'll feel worse if he doesn't spend some time upright, and swallows down water and semi-liquid medical rations leaning on the kitchenette counter. He keeps reaching abortively for things with his right hand, then wincing in either pain or frustration, until Hux – perceiving an engineering problem – binds the arm snugly across his chest. The intervention relaxes him immediately and dramatically.

It's early yet for Hux to be expected on the bridge or the data network, so they curl up together for a while on the blocky, standard-issue settee.

(This is their primary mode of intimacy. Like most raised in the Order military, Hux's first sexual experiences had been of the sort theoretically forbidden by regulations; he'd been fortunate enough for the partners and circumstances to be more or less of his own choosing. The _activities_ had been … not entirely uninteresting, but he'd never felt the compulsion, the “lust” that popular entertainments and his Academy classmates spoke of. If anything moved him, it was the simple feeling of another body pressed against his own, limbs curled around each other to maximize the surface area of contact. But he kept these desires to himself, suspecting others would not understand.

He'd never interrogate Ren about such things, and Ren rarely addressed his own past unprompted. But Hux knew who Ren had been; knew the Jedi were a monastic order; and his impression of Ren's time with Lord Snoke was … unlike to the Academy. Certainly he'd reacted to Hux's first, cautious touch as if he'd never experienced physical affection before, and feared he might never again. At times they'd experimented with touch of a deliberately sexual nature, and Ren was not averse. But he seemed most content to just rest in Hux's arms, letting Hux's hands and lips wander where they would – or not.)

“Can you tell me what happened?” It was something to do with the Force, for certain. Hux had seen similar injuries dealt during interrogations, but they were never so precise, so _thorough,_ when delivered by human hands and tools.

“The usual.” That meant meditation under deprivation: sensory, sleep, food – the purification the Supreme Leader required, when Ren had been too long on the _Finalizer,_ too long in the mundane world. “Then I was commanded to spar with the Knights.

“It must have looked too easy. It _was_ easy, glorious, until I sensed Supreme Leader's displeasure, and … felt the bones go. All at once.”

“What then?”

“Picked up the sparring weapon with my other hand. Fought them. Then Supreme Leader released me, ordered me to return here.” _Without seeking treatment first,_ went without saying.

(Not that Hux is sure Ren _would_ seek treatment, if permitted.

Shortly after Ren had begun sleeping in Hux's bed, his ship had auto-docked with the _Finalizer_ after some days' absence _,_ unresponsive to coms. Hux had found him on the shuttle floor, just conscious enough to mutter over and over, _don't take me to medbay, don't let them sedate me,_ _ **the nightmares**_. Against his better judgment, Hux had cleared the hangar and the route to his quarters, called a float-pallet and the surgical droid.

That had been a relatively straightforward reprimand, a single clean fracture of each tibia and fibula. Ren couldn't or wouldn't say what offense he'd committed against the Supreme Leader, that time. He'd borne the injury with uncomplaining efficiency, as Hux would learn was his wont. But it took him longer to resume smiling at Hux's verbal fancies than it did to get back on his feet.)

“You know how I feel about this mode of 'training _.'_ ” Hux won't repeat his entire argument, knowing it to be both futile and an insult to Ren's intelligence, Ren having heard and understood him the first time. But he feels justified in re-registering his disapproval, just once per _incident._

“I know. I'm sorry. I can't--”

He won't make Ren repeat his arguments, either. “I know.”

“You shouldn't have to … deal with the consequences, though. I don't have to come here when I'm--”

Hux (carefully) thrusts Ren away from him, holds him by the shoulders at arms' length. “If you don't, I'll hunt you to the ends of the galaxy, do you understand me?” He makes sure Ren meets his eyes – though he knows he, Hux, won’t be able to parse what he sees – before pulling him close again. “I just wish you wouldn't let him hurt you, is all.”

“It's not a matter of 'letting' him. It's just … what I have to do.”

“I know, darling,” Hux soothes, wishing he did.

*

Early in their _enhanced_ acquaintanceship, Hux had told Ren about Commander Kowakian. He'd meant it as a mildly amusing anecdote, but Ren had cocked his head and regarded him enigmatically.

“Whatever message Supreme Leader was sending, it was meant for you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You said yourself your Captain Monkey-Lizard was a nothing. And since when does Supreme Leader speak directly to officers at his level? Or let _anyone_ bring along their staff?”

“Fair point.” Indeed, since the advent of co-commandership, Lord Snoke had allowed no one in his holochamber on the _Finalizer_ save Hux and Ren themselves. “It might have been different back then, though.”

“No. I've been reading your records. You've earned your place, absolutely, but I see the threads of Supreme Leader's … interest. He always meant for you to be where you are.”

“What 'message' did he think I'd absorb from that preposterous display, then?”

“Only you can know that. It may not have come to fruition, yet.”

*

When the droid's weekly scan finds flesh and bone sufficiently mended, Hux drops the cut-away pieces of the cast into the recycling chute; settles at Ren's left side, shoulder to shoulder on the settee.

“Does it still hurt?”

“Not really. It’s just stiff.”

Ren is manipulating the fingers of his right hand with his left, passively flexing and extending the under-exercised joints. Hux reaches across Ren to rest a hand on his bicep, no nearer the site of the injury than necessary to telegraph his intentions.

“May I?”

Ren nods. Hux runs his fingers down forearm and wrist before cradling the recently-injured hand in both his own, stroking and caressing every surface before finally raising it to his lips to kiss each knuckle. The bacta has eaten away at the familiar sword-callouses. Only when Ren sighs into his shoulder can he be sure that Ren didn't permit this touch just to humor him, that he experiences it as pleasurable or comforting, not painful or trauma-invoking.

(When the float-chair and the awful, bulky immobilizers had given way to elbow crutches and sleek removable braces, Hux had joined Ren in the shower, kneeling before the bench seat to sponge away the last of the stinking spent bacta; had been moved by impulse to apply his lips – carefully, no pressure, just touch – to those light-years of skin which had so long been neglected. When he'd heard Ren sob, looked up to see his face turned violently to the side, he'd backed away instantly.

“Oh, darling, I've hurt you. I'm so sorry–”

“No, it's not that. It doesn't hurt. It's just … please don't stop.”

So Hux had continued his ministrations until the water ran cold.)

*

Later, when Ren disappears abruptly from Hux's quarters and – insofar as their continued theoretical co-commandership of the _Finalizer_ permits – his life; when the only words Ren has for him are curt commands and insults actually calculated to hurt; when Ren becomes erratic, losing his brutal competence in battle and instead leaving missions disastrously half-finished; when he begins turning consoles and interrogation chambers into flaming wreckage; when Hux walks unwitting into one of his maskless colloquies with Lord Snoke – whose priorities have become more and more absurd, making Hux doubt his own commitment to the Order – and he turns his face away as if in loathing, depriving Hux of the sight he has by then yearned after for months...

...when Starkiller is no more, and Ren's limp body is taken from Hux's hands, to be sedated and hauled without dignity off to medbay...

...when all this happens, Hux will remember Commander Kowakian. Will spend his sleepless nights concocting subtle means of communication, ways to let Ren know he _understands._ But what if his cleverness doesn't fool the Supreme Leader? What punishment might befall him, or Ren?

(And _does_ he understand? Could he bear to find out, if he doesn't?)

When Ren is stabilized enough to be loaded, unconscious, onto a shuttle, Hux will tell his officers that the Supreme Leader instructed him to deliver Ren to him _personally_ , and _alone_. These will be perfectly plausible Lord Snoke stipulations, though in fact the rotting creature will not have made them. Hux helped design the Upsilon in his youth, and will know where to stash the extra provisions – the soft, simple clothes – so the grunts prepping the shuttle won't find them. No one has ever known in what extrajudicial, labyrinthinely obscured accounts he keeps his personal savings.

He'll have heartbeats, in the end, to make his decision. To execute the navicomputer program for the current location of the _Supremacy,_ or … the other one.

(He'll have thought, upon scooping Ren's mangled body from the disintegrating face of Starkiller, of fabricating some preposterous new “order from Lord Snoke” to send his escort of troopers back to the planetoid's surface; then blasting the pilot in the back of the head and leaping straight into hyperspace. He'll have tried to convince himself he couldn't so doom the blameless troopers, but truly, he didn't give a damn about them. _(You may be lacking standard human emotional responses.)_ He _will_ have worried that his competent but undistinguished piloting wouldn't countenance such a maneuver, or that Ren's injuries would be beyond the skill of the field-triage med-droid he’d brought.

But it will have been fear that stayed his hand. Not of Snoke – surely the old ghoul couldn't be as omnipotent as all that, given that Luke Skywalker continued to evade him, after such disastrous diversion of the Order's resources toward his destruction. And if the rotting creature did manage to hunt them down, what did it matter, when everything had already fallen apart?

No, it was fear – _terror_ – that it might not be a Commander Kowakian situation after all. That Ren had _chosen_ to turn from him. That his intervention would be _unwelcome._ )

He'll glance once more across the cabin, at the still body on the portable medical bed. He'll key a command.

*

When Hux says, _you're going to recover completely,_ they both know it comes with certain caveats. That because too much time has passed for bacta treatment to achieve its full potential, the healing will be that of mortal flesh, imperfect. That in conditions of fluctuating barometric pressure, the deep scar tissue and the seams of healed fractures will ache, sometimes badly enough to prevent Ren from sleeping. It's another reason for Hux – oddly, much more than Ren – to loathe the occasional necessity of going planetside.

He wakes groggily in what he supposes is _pre-dawn_ darkness. Dimly remembers shooting Ren full of non-narcotic analgesics; then staying up, over Ren's protests, for half the planetary night, rubbing the places that hurt the worst until Ren could at least bear to lie still.

“Go back to sleep,” Ren murmurs. _“_ At least one of us ought to get some.”

“I'm awake.” He yawns hugely, sucking in oxygen in a valiant attempt to make it true. Runs his hand along Ren's wrist, where he can feel tendons shifting beneath the skin. “May I?”

“Of _course_. Always.”

So he takes the hand that Ren has been curling and uncurling in discomfort, massages the joints with firm but gentle fingers. The sword-callouses are thinner than he remembers, which perplexes him until he thinks muzzily: this injury is barely out of the bacta-cast, he shouldn't be on missions until he's back to full strength, thank the stars we can wrap up this diplomatic visit today and get off this wretched “beautiful,” “natural” dirtball and back to the _Finalizer_...

Then: No. Surely that was years ago. Surely the _Finalizer_ is long gone; the blissfully atmospherically controlled environment that awaits them a much simpler one, but of Hux's own design; this planetary sojourn at a client's insistence. (To hell with the client, next time.)

He can't distinguish, as he sinks back into sleep, among reality, memory, fantasy. He could provide himself with a data-point, could trace his fingers over Ren's upturned right cheek, see if he encounters the scar. (Had he not kissed it, last night? Or was that – ?)

He keeps his fingers where they are, curled around Ren's. He can choose, no matter how impossibly miraculous the readings, to trust the instrument in hand.


End file.
